And so while in the midst of grief how do you begin to grow? How do you not become stuck and staid in that place of sharp sorrow? And, in moving forward, how do you begin to grieve or allow yourself to mourn when to do so feels like a deliberate choice to hurt?
October 23, 2009 and my life was as it was suppose to be. My life was as how I had planned for it. For the most part. I had a wonderful wife whom I loved dearly and luck of all luck she loved me too. I had two young healthy sons. The youngest was three and his big brother had just had his sixth birthday early in the month. My life is how I wanted it to be. My life was how I worked for it to be. And then on that day I received a phone call from my father that I need to
come to my mother’s bedside because she was dying. My mother had been diagnosed years ago with a form of cancer called multiple myeloma. At the time the doctors gave her no more than three years to live. It was now 15 years later.
I jumped up, kissed my wife and my two sons good-bye and flew 3000 miles to be with my mother as she passed away. I got there in time, but she passed away on October 24, 2009. I didn’t grieve in anyway that others would notice. I didn’t grieve in any way that I could notice. My wife noticed. She knew and got it even if I didn’t. And for the next year she helped me through a difficult time even though I wasn’t fully cognizant of what I was going through.
On October 22, 2010 I picked my wife up from her job and as we drove home. I was annoyed with life, with her, with my sons and with myself. I didn’t hide it well. At one point she just chuckled at me. I looked at her trying to be deliberately menacing.
“What is so funny?”
“You know it will be one year since your mother died on the 24th?”
I hadn’t realized. That explained my foul mood all month long and why nothing could lift this cloud hanging over me. I truly had forgotten. I was so thankful for that from her. I was so lucky to have met a woman like her.
October 27, 2010 my wife, Cynthia Fallon-Mayes, died. She was only 40 years old. She had no illness, no drug and alcohol use and it was not an accident of any kind. She simply had developed a brain aneurism. It burst and she died. She dropped dead. We had known each other for 13 years, married for 11 of them and have two beautiful sons.
For the next nine months I was numb. Not outwardly or inwardly grieving. No growth or profound change in my life. I was simply in a holding pattern for nine month. I felt like I had an elephant on my shoulders, ALL THE TIME.
At the end of the nine month period I made some rapid and drastic change. Not a smart thing to do. Not a stupid thing to do. It is just what I had to do. So from May of 2011 to present I became a student of ICA, quit my job, actively became more present in my sons lives, put our house on the market, began collecting social security (felt guilty about that one), moved 3000 miles away from my wife’s family to be closer to my family, bought a new house, enrolled my boys in a new school and school district, became an active member of the PTA, got my kids involved in grief counseling, got into my own grief group, began looking for a church, stopped looking for a church, became a cub scout leader in my boys cub scout pack, and currently I am getting ready for summer with my boys and attempting to finish up my ICA studies and graduation.